Meandering analysis

Are newspapers content farms?

I disagreed with a recent blog post by Alan Patrick which described the Huffington Post as a content farm. I do not think that the alleged lack of original content at the Huffpo is any worse than at many newspapers: so I concluded that it is not a content farm. It could be interpreted the other way: newspapers are content farms too.

How much original content is there in newspapers. Lets look at the last ten stories in the Guardian RSS feed. This is a random sample from one of the best newspapers in Britain:

North and South Korea to hold reunion talks. I cannot prove it, but the style, and the fact that it is by the same correspondent (based in Tokyo), I would be very surprised if this is not another re-write of stuff from news wires.

The Guardian contains both good and original content, but the articles that are good are not original, and those that are original are not good, with the possible exception of Aufa Hirsch’s article.

What value comes from a newspaper? There are only three pieces of really original content out of the ten I looked at, and two of those are related to the arts and are not really what I would call news (nothing wrong with that, of course).

Journalists are more skilled reporters and better writers than those who churn out stuff for the likes of Demand Media. They add some original content by chasing up quote, but that is really all they add. If the Guardian is not a content farm, most of it is not very different from one.